Product Requirements Document: Team Collaboration Feature Set

Author: Priya Venkatesan Status: Approved Date: 5 June 2026 Target release: v4.0 Stakeholders: Product (Priya), Design (Theo Lind), Engineering (Sam Okoye), Customer Success (Mara Diaz)

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1. Overview and problem

Northwind is a project-tracking app used mostly by individuals managing their own work. As accounts have grown, teams have started sharing a single login or copying details between apps to coordinate, because Northwind has no real way for several people to work in the same project. This feature set adds the collaboration basics — shared projects, assignment, comments, and notifications — so a team can plan and run work together inside Northwind instead of around it.

2. Goals and success metrics

Goals

• Let teams work together in a shared project without leaving Northwind.
• Reduce the coordination that today happens in chat tools and spreadsheets.

Success metrics

Metric	Baseline today	Target	How it's measured
Multi-member projects	0% of active projects	35% within 90 days	Project membership data
Weekly active collaborators	n/a	3+ members in 25% of team projects	Activity events
Seat expansion in team accounts	1.0 seats / account	2.4 seats / account	Billing data

3. Target users and personas

• Lena, the team lead — runs a 6-person marketing team. She wants to see who is doing what and unblock people without chasing them in chat. Today she keeps a private spreadsheet because Northwind cannot show her the whole team's work.
• Raj, the team member — an individual contributor who wants to know what is assigned to him and discuss a task without switching to email. Today he gets task details forwarded to him second-hand.

4. User stories and requirements

User stories

• As a team lead, I want to invite teammates to a project so that we can plan and track work in one place.
• As a team lead, I want to assign a task to a teammate so that ownership is clear.
• As a team member, I want to comment on a task so that the discussion lives with the work.
• As a team member, I want to be notified when something is assigned to me or mentions me so that nothing slips.

Functional requirements

1. (Must) A project owner can invite people by email to a shared project and assign them a role of editor or viewer.
2. (Must) Any editor can assign a task to a member of the project; the assignee is shown on the task and in list views.
3. (Must) Members can post threaded comments on a task, and can @mention another project member.
4. (Must) A member receives an in-app and email notification when a task is assigned to them or they are @mentioned.
5. (Should) Members can see a per-project activity feed of assignments and comments.
6. (Could) Members can react to a comment with a small set of emoji.

5. Scope and non-goals

In scope for this release

• Shared projects with editor and viewer roles, task assignment, threaded comments, @mentions, and the resulting notifications.

Non-goals

• Real-time co-editing of the same task field by two people at once — out of scope for v4.0.
• Cross-organisation guest access; collaboration is limited to members of the same account for now.
• Granular per-task permissions beyond the project-level editor/viewer roles.

6. UX considerations

The shared project should feel like the existing single-user project with people added, not a separate mode. Assignment and comments must be reachable from the task without a full-page change. Key states to design for: an empty project with only the owner, a task with no assignee, a long comment thread, and a member who has lost access. Notifications must be glanceable and must not overwhelm — assignment and @mention only in this release.

7. Dependencies and risks

Item	Type	Impact	How we'll handle it
Account/identity service must support multi-member roles	Dependency	Blocks invites and roles	Confirm capability with platform team before build
Email notification service	Dependency	Blocks the notification requirement	Reuse the existing transactional email pipeline
Notification volume could feel like spam	Risk	Hurts adoption	Limit to assignment and @mention; add per-user controls in a fast follow
Teams sharing one login may resist paying per seat	Risk	Limits seat-expansion metric	Pair launch with a clear migration prompt and CS outreach

8. Release criteria

• All Must requirements (1–4) implemented and verified against their feature specs.
• Membership, assignment, and notification events are instrumented and reporting to the metrics dashboard.
• No open critical or high defects in invite, assignment, or notification flows.
• Sign-off from Product, Engineering, and Customer Success.

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Open questions

• Should viewers be able to comment, or is commenting editor-only? Owner: Priya. To resolve before build.
• What is the upper limit on members per project for this release? Owner: Sam. To confirm with the platform team.